Age of Wisdom
by chezchuckles
Summary: A companion to Worst of Times which takes place immediately after WoT but before Best of Times. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness. . ." Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities


**Age of Wisdom: **a Worst of Times/Best of Times companion

* * *

><p>The distance is quite simply<br>much too far for me to row.  
>It seems farther than ever before<p>

Oh no.

I need you so much closer.

-Death Cab for Cute, 'Transatlanticism'

* * *

><p>"Why are you over there?" he whispers.<p>

Her eyes startle open, her neck pinches in pain as she jerks in the chair, unfolding stiffly. "Castle?"

"Too far away."

She blinks away the deja vu of that statement and gets up from the uncomfortable chair in his bedroom. Not a smart place to fall asleep.

"How do you feel?" she asks, stopping at the side of his bed and leaning over him, smoothing her hand along the top of the covers.

He moves his lips but says nothing, his eyes sliding shut. He woke with nightmares earlier, but never came out of it enough for him to know she was there. She hopes he falls back to sleep now. The room is dark with the late evening city just outside his window; a strange half-light makes a line across his bed, illuminating the rise of his knee as he shifts awkwardly.

"Gotta be in pain like that," he mutters, and then his eyes slide open.

"Are you hurting?" she whispers, giving up on not touching him to stroke her hand down his cheek.

"No. You. Sleeping in that chair. It's not made for sleeping."

"You're not in any pain?" she says, checking his eyes, intent on the lines in his face. His skin is the color of parchment, his shoulder bound and in a sling, both hands in complete casts. He looks worn out.

"Kate, don't sleep in the chair," he says suddenly, and tries to bring up a hand to touch her - but she gets knocked in the ribs with his cast instead.

Fifth time tonight. She's gonna have a bruise there.

Kate catches his heavy cast before the movement gives him any more pain, lowers it slowly to the bed. He's due for another pill in an hour or so, and she knows from a week's experience that these night hours are the worst. His eyes are shut again, but he seems more with it than earlier tonight.

"Kate please don't sleep in the chair. Go back to bed."

"I'm fine," she says, and eases to her knees beside his bed, sitting back on her feet.

He swallows and turns his head, opens his eyes again, seems to really study her down on the floor. "Kate."

"I'm fine. Really. You've got another pain pill in-" she checks her watch "-fifty minutes. You okay?"

"No. I'm not. You've been. . .here all week. You're gonna wear yourself out."

"Your mom can't lift you up-"

"Mother and Alexis together can-"

"Your daughter shouldn't have to. But I can. I have one more week of PTO, and then we'll see."

"PTO. . .paid time off for the shooting?"

"And vacation days," she says tightly, remembering all too clearly, too immediate, the recoil of the weapon in her hands and that inhuman, frustrated roar from Jerry Tyson as he'd tried to batter his way into the study, shoving again and again against Castle's prone body.

"You been cleared yet?"

"Yes, Castle," she says softly, and brushes her hand along his forehead, moving the hair out of his eyes. "I told you three days ago."

"Huh."

She leaves her thumb in the scar over his eyebrow, traces it as his eyes slip shut again under her touch. She leans against the bed, her breath catching as her side comes into contact with the mattress. Definitely bruised.

"At least come up here," he says finally, and his arm twitches like he wants to wrap his fingers around her. He probably does. He's tried that a lot.

"I'm good."

"You're sitting in the floor."

"Master of the obvious."

His eyes open, but there's no humor. He's intense and entirely too lucid for her liking. He's got 50 minutes before he can have another pill, and she still has this overwhelming need to brush her fingers over his cheeks, his forehead, just a few more minutes. She needs to be sure. But she doesn't like to do that when he's awake.

"Kate, I hate this."

Her chest clenches; she makes a fist and draws her hand away from him.

"No," he groans, but she can tell that's frustration and not pain. After a week, she knows the difference. "Get back here. I can't do anything. Can't even touch you-"

"Sorry. I'm back." She slides her hand back to his forehead, guilt trickling through her spine in an icy rivulet. She lays her head against his cast and sighs. "I'm back." She made him a promise; she intends to keep it.

"I'd make you go back to bed, you know." He definitely is entirely too conscious. He might even remember this later.

"I know you would," she says.

"But since I can't do that. I want to grab you by the wrist and make you get up here instead. So you're gonna have to do that for me." He opens his eyes and they are narrow slits, something like amusement in them. He curls his lips into a sly smile. It's been awhile. It. . .it makes her happy to see that.

Silly, but she takes what she can get these days.

"Kate," he warns.

"I'm coming," she says and gets to her knees, then slowly stands up. He watches her the whole time, yes, conscious and aware, unfortunately, and she eases onto the bed, trying not to jostle him too much.

"I need you closer," he says.

He's not going to be content with her just sitting. He's acting as petulant as he did at the hospital, and forgive her, but she can't seem to take any steps back from him.

"Now lay down," he instructs, nodding his head to the empty space beside him.

It *is* a king-sized bed. Plenty of room. She won't accidentally roll into him. She knows he can't stay conscious for long either. She'll just wait until he falls asleep again.

"You're not sleeping in that chair when there's all this bed," he says. His voice is too firm. His eyes on her are as good as five strong fingers.

So she crawls over him and lays down, turning her body to see his face. His eyes follow her, dark and filled to the brim with something that looks like the last of his pain meds but isn't.

"You're not sleeping in that chair, Kate."

"I'm not now."

"Not again." His shoulder moves; she reaches out and puts her hand there, stilling him. "Kate. I'm serious. I already feel bad for making you-"

"Okay," she says quickly. "I won't." Even she's a little surprised at how fast she gives in. Well, no. She's not. The worst thing she's ever faced was the sight of Castle in the floor of his study, arms bound and swollen behind his back, throat closed up with the ligature marks, bloodied and in pain and calling her name, but not able to reach him, not able to get to him. She will do anything, anything-

She doesn't want to make him feel bad.

Just. Leave it at that, Kate.

He tilts his head and brushes his lips across her knuckles, her hand still on his shoulder. Despite her own twitchy instincts, she doesn't pull her hand away. She leaves it there. For his sake. She knows it hurts him to move his head, so the reward must exceed the effort.

For his sake. That's what she keeps telling herself.

* * *

><p>For fifty minutes, she lays on her side and watches him flicker in and out of sleep or consciousness. She is on her side of the bed - no, a side, one side, this side - and he is on his side - the other side.<p>

She floats on a sea of suffering, a mute despair that crests and troughs for those fifty minutes of silent, soft nothing.

A lot of what ifs. A lot of if onlys. Not much credit for herself or her team, despite finding Castle in time, despite good detective work, despite an otherworldly sense of something wrong that eventually led her to speed demon her way through morning city traffic to his loft, boys in tow, and save his very life.

She is not sure what has been saved of her own, though.

From here, she can see the angry, abused line of his throat. The slash of the rope scar. It is sensitive to the touch, he says, and the bruises beneath it are mottled and flecked with deeper, more punishing contusions that just won't heal on all this medication.

Soon. But not right now.

He has trouble swallowing, turning his head. Still, he turns his head to look at her, suppressing the effort it costs him with the force of his will. As if showing her what hurts and how it hurts somehow diminishes him in her eyes.

She's afraid, at times, that it just might.

Other times, like in the daylight, like when he's loopy on pain medication and making her laugh, she doesn't think of it a bit.

He has two casts, decorated over every surface, doodled on, detailed, tattooed, inscribed, signed, marked, mauled, and awash with the good wishes of every person he comes into contact with. Nurses, cops, his daughter, the boys, Lanie, ER attendings, surgeons, pain management specialists, pharmacists, his publisher's entire editing team, his doorman, fans who managed to get past Beckett that first day but not a single day since, and Kate. Herself.

She has the most real estate on his casts, and more and more every moment. Either because Castle can't - write, doodle, message, curl his fingers - or because it relieves some dark ache in her, she doesn't know.

After fifty minutes, Kate slips from bed and pulls the sharpies out from under the chair, has to hunt for the black one, which she used as a bookmark in A Farewell to Arms. Castle's book, from his bookshelf, and his suggestion, "pun intended, Beckett." Not funny. But hypnotic and fascinating all the same; these lines come to her at inopportune moments:

_You're my religion. You're all I've got._

and

_The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry._

In no special hurry herself, Kate gets to her knees beside the bed, uncaps the silver sharpie and proceeds to metallic-out the inconsequential remarks of strangers. She has had to get Esposito over here twice to re-sign his name and message: his writing is terrible, and she keeps accidentally silver-penning right over it. Esposito's scrawl on plaster is like a two year old's.

Kate is silent, and industrious, and it keeps the remaining minutes until he wakes filled with something other than thinking, other than the doomed love affair of two characters in a book, one of whom is Catherine.

She learned the first night home from the hospital that waking Castle for a pain pill is like waking a sleeping bear with a freshly caught fish. Both stupid and dangerous. And possibly likely to kill them both. Or at least make her ribs black and blue.

So she will color until he wakes.

She silvers his casts because he won't have them for much longer. In four days, he will go back into surgery to have the removable screws finally removed. She finds it impossible to believe that a week and a half's worth of time is all it takes for his mangled bones to become stable enough to no longer need screws.

She saw those fingers. She saw those bones displaced and buckled and greensticked and spiraled. She was the one who reached behind him and cut the cords around his wrists and felt the paroxysm of pain spike through his body when she did. She was the one who couldn't hold his hand.

The doctors and surgeons said, "You'll be surprised how quickly little bones can heal." She makes fruit smoothies with protein packs and Vitamin D powder, mixes it with milk, makes him drink those all day long. She doesn't believe that little bones can heal in three weeks, but she wants to. She does what she can to help.

In three weeks he will not even have the braces or splints or 'walking' cast, but full time physical therapy with some of the best therapists around. North. Not in the city, as she might have thought, but in White Plains. She will take him anywhere. At any time, and it will not diminish him in her eyes.

She colors around his thumb, or what would be his thumb under all this plaster. This is his left hand where every digit was given the terrible treatment, whatever that was, stomping or smashing or one by one breaking. She doesn't know; he won't say. He says nothing about Tyson, only wakes sometimes in the night with a hoarse cry, like a man being strangled.

_Do not think._

She silvers the thumb, likes how it makes the cast look like he's hitching a ride with her for awhile. She'd pick him up, take him wherever he wanted to go so long as she could come along.

She chooses green next, blowing on the silver to make it dry faster. She starts with vines that twine around the silver backdrop. Castle twitches in his sleep, arm movement that carries to the fingers trapped in plaster and back up to his shoulders, his neck, his head so that his face rolls towards her now, his eyelashes long and blonde-streaked-brown across his sickly looking skin.

He needs some sunlight. She will have to figure out a way. Maybe she can convince him to ride with her to her apartment to pick up some things, (what things? she doesn't need anything but the Zambien and the sound of his breathing). While she's there, she can maneuver him up the little stairs and onto the garden-roof-terrace she has. Sunlight and green plants and the flowering African violets. Those, at least, will not disgrace her and reveal her lack of watering.

Her African violets love her the more she is away.

Castle just loves her. The closer she is the better.

* * *

><p>She slinks back out to the living room with the water and the smoothie glass, puts them both carefully in the sink so she won't make a noise. That's the fastest she's managed to get the pain pill down his abused throat in the whole time she's been here; she feels strangely accomplished. Kate is halfway back to his room when a shadow moves on the couch and detaches itself.<p>

"How is he?" Alexis says.

"Goofy again," Kate whispers, and slides back towards the living room, sitting down where Alexis pulls up her feet to make space.

"Good," Alexis whispers back. "He's more himself when he's goofy."

"And in less pain."

"Is it getting less?"

Kate nods, to avoid outright lying, but Alexis sees it on her face.

"The pain meds are getting less," the girl answers for herself and shrugs on a sigh. "That's okay, I guess. He'll have to come around one of these days."

Kate wonders if she's needed for this conversation, then hates herself for feeling irritated and impatient to get back in that room.

"Kate. . .is he asleep again?"

"Yes," she answers, wondering.

"Can you. . .stay with me out here for awhile? You can hear him if he calls. I can hear him from here at least-"

"Yes," she says, chewing on her cheek to keep from saying more.

"Thank you," Alexis sighs and her lips turn down for an instant, then valiantly struggle upwards on a smile. "I'm tired. Aren't you tired?"

"I'm exhausted," Kate laughs. That chair. It's not made for sleeping.

"We'll do head to toe," Alexis says, already wriggling down to the far end of the couch, spreading out the blanket and sheets and bedding over them both. Kate can't remember when exactly Alexis made this little nest, but it's been here awhile.

"Head to toe?"

"I sleep with my head down here, and you with your head at that end, and our toes end up - yeah," she giggles, moving her head back when Kate catches on and shoves her feet down Alexis's way, her toes at the girl's side.

She's making Alexis laugh. More than just his hands, maybe she can be this as well.

* * *

><p>"Kate?"<p>

She wakes to a hard touch against her skull, a cast, and an apology on a whisper. She cracks open an eye and waits for the light to coalesce into shapes and colors and lines.

"Castle? What are you doing up?" How is he even standing upright?

"I got smoothie thirsty. And then sidetracked by the slumber party in my living room." He sinks slowly to his knees beside the couch, then sits all the way down. Then lays his head against her arm, looking worn out. "You've been asleep for ages, Kate."

"Oh?"

"The couch is good for sleeping."

"Must be," she whispers back, and lifts her head to see if Alexis-

"She's at school."

"Oh. OH-"

"No. Stay. My turn for head to toe."

She stares at him for a second, then shakes her head and starts to sit up. A heavy cast comes across her chest, bruising her sternum. She glances up at him, sees the raised eyebrow and the imperious look on his face. Too long spent asking her for things and her getting them.

"Lay down, Beckett. You need sleep and I want to cuddle with your toes."

"That sounds creepy."

"It is a little," he grins. Ah, yes, pain pills?

"Did you take another pain pill?"

"Not yet, this is 100% Castle goodness. No artificial sweeteners."

She checks the time and nearly drops her jaw. "It's two in the afternoon."

"I got the last one all by myself, Detective."

"No you didn't. You don't have hands."

He laughs and slides under the bedding, then stares down at it. He elaborately uses his casts like tongs, tugging the bedsheets up until he's cozy. She feels his toes against her ribs, digging into that bruise.

She swats his feet away and stares him down. "Did you really take a pain pill on schedule? At. . .ten I think? Did you-"

"Yes, Kate. Alexis got it out of the bottle for me and poured me some water before she left. She wanted you to sleep. She told me to figure it out. And not wake you. She said someone needed to look after you like you were looking after us."

He tilts his head and gives her a new look; one of his arms hooks around her feet, the cast hard against her shin. That new look persists, soft or tender or questioning or doubting. Not sure what, only that it allows her to somehow enjoy the slow slide of his foot up her thigh to her ribs. Again, same spot, but his toes wriggle at the soft skin under her arm.

"Were you looking after my daughter, Kate?"

She blinks, opens her mouth, but nothing comes out.

"She said you slumber partied with her."

"I fell asleep on the couch with her."

"Because she asked you to," he presses.

"Yes."

"Why?"

_Because she's scared and alone and needed you, and we're the same._

"Why, Kate?"

"Because I promised to be your hands."

He stares at her like he doesn't quite believe her or understand her, much like she stared at the surgeons when they told her he'd be in physical therapy after three weeks.

It doesn't seem possible.

But it is.

"How long?" he asks suddenly. "Because it occurs to me that I thought I needed help with stuff like pain meds and opening water bottles, but what I really need help with is this stuff right here." He doesn't gesture (he is, at least, learning which movements are worth the pain); he doesn't nod with his head, doesn't dart his eyes, so she has no idea what exactly he does need help with. What 'right here' consists of.

Well, except that he keeps looking at her. Like *she's* the thing he needs help with.

"They said three weeks until the casts come off-"

He sighs, shoulders drooping.

"And then three weeks of physical therapy-"

His eyes come up to hers.

"So six weeks, Castle."

"And you'll stay right here?"

"On the couch?" she smiles, softly, tentatively, rebuilding this thing right here, a connection back to the pain behind the pain pills, the Castle of before, not the one of broken bones and raw skin and bruises.

"Let's not restrict your healing powers, okay? What about say. . .right here means all of the loft? Wherever you choose to sleep."

Wherever she. . .

Kate burrows back down in the bedding so that his toes are no longer on her ribs but now tucked up against her chest. Weird. Creepy. Head to toe nonsense and a pain pill he basically admitted to licking off the counter, but-

"Six weeks right here," she agrees.

Closer. Just that much closer.


End file.
